A SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN SOCIETY. 595 



quay, or in the house of the purchaser or of the lessor, respectively. 

 That the waterways, which received careful attention, were used for 

 this transportation, need not excite surprise. Since ship asses are 

 many times mentioned, it might seem as though the boats had been 

 drawn from the bank by asses, but that is probably not correct. 

 According to the representations, rafts of the Assyrians were made of 

 wooden frames, under which were fastened skins of rams, closed and 

 water-tight, and filled with air. Navigation is practiced in similar 

 manner down the river even to-day on the Tigris. At the place of des- 

 tination the wood is sold along with the cargo, and the skins are piled 

 up and transported back upon asses. Such asses might well be meant 

 in the passages mentioned; nothing, however, is learned from this as 

 to the manner of navigation on the canals. 



The laborers had, as a remnant of the ancient domestic management, 

 their full maintenance upon the land, and wages beside. If they were 

 free peasants, these wages came from a share in the produce of the har- 

 vest. Slaves received their food and clothing from their masters and 

 if they were hired, the employers might give them wages as he did to 

 free laborers; from this they paid to their owner the profit due him from 

 a slave, but might, however, claim clothing from him. Therefore, there 

 are also contracts of hire in which the employer pledged himself to fur- 

 nish the clothing. It happened, besides, that the employer paid the 

 slave's dues to the master, and guaranteed food and clothing, originally 

 without paying the slave himself anything at all. This would seem to 

 have been the earlier, the other the later form; yet nothing conclusive 

 can as yet be established concerning these important questions. 



From the part of the crop which now remained over, therefore, as fol- 

 lows from the conditions detailed above, the contractor's rent was to be 

 paid, the owner's income, and the incumbent taxes and imposts. The 

 rent was either a fixed rent or a share rent. In the first case there was 

 fixed the amount of produce or money to be delivered to the owner. 

 We have several such records, but unfortunately the particulars as to 

 the amount of the rent permit of no inference as to its relation to the 

 returns from the harvests. It was otherwise in the case of the share 

 rents. There it was provided that, after deduction of costs, the pro- 

 ceeds were to be divided equally between tenant and owner. There are 

 several statements in which, moreover, it was agreed who should pay 

 the taxes. 



The income of the owners of landed property, among whom the tem- 

 ples also are, of course, to be reckoned, came to them, according to 

 what was said above, in the shape of money or in that of produce. If 

 the latter case prevailed, and this was the rule, there was, naturally, 

 often a hardship for the owner in being compelled to meet his monetary 

 obligations during a period of low prices for grain. On this account, 

 we find an exceedingly large number of texts in which proprietors were 



